Data Science and Power BI - Yash Sharma

Feb 5, 2022
2 min read

Updated: Aug 28, 2022

Hello, Interdisciplinary!

My name is Yash Sharma and I am a current high school junior from northern Illinois! I have had vast experiences in both the business and STEM fields, but today I will be speaking about my Data Science/ Power BI knowledge and expertise! In the summer of 2021, I served as a data science intern within Abbott Laboratories Rapid Diagnostics Unit. Within this position, I was provided with amazing mentors across the globe to teach me about both the STEM and business aspects of this amazing field.

Within my experience this summer, one of my most major projects and accomplishments was the creation of a live report which was able to track the social sentiment data regarding many of Abbott’s Rapid Diagnostics products. I generated this report using public spacing data extracted from domains such as Twitter, Instagram, and even Reddit. This data was extracted and taken into Microsoft excel. This excel file in combination with manually extracted data was consequently moved into Power BI for the report. I was able to gain the experience to be able to create this report with no prior knowledge in Power BI and intermediate excel/ python skills.

If you are more experienced with coding languages such as R or Python or are experienced with Microsoft Excel then this process will be much easier for you within Power BI. For me, I started off with growing my excel skills. My best suggestions for growing these skills are amazing videos from Youtubers such as Teacher’s Tech. I also utilized programs such as DataCamp, SkillShare, and Simplilearn. With all these programs aside, in my opinion, learning and experimenting with excel is the best way to learn your way around the platform. The more time I spent on the platform, the more functions, and processes I gained. Data science is all about efficiency and this increased exactly that.

For data sets that were too large to handle with just Microsoft excel packages, I utilized coding languages such as Python to assist me in my journey. Along with courses from places such as Coursera and Codeacademy I suggest utilizing LinkedIn Learning’s Data Science Specific Courses. Furthermore, I suggest experimenting with Python libraries to expand your skill. Libraries and packages such as NumPy and Pandas especially assisted me in my journey.

Finally, creating the visualizations in Power BI is the most rewarding part of this process. For Power BI, I suggest using resources directly from the Power BI website. Along with this, videos from creators such as Pragmatic Works and Avi Singh assisted me in the journey. To increase the diversity of your dashboard experiment with applications within Power BI that give your report relevant personality. One of my personal favorites has been WordBlob, a picture example of this app is pictured below!